Discussions from a graduating Master's student on items including life in the Upper Midwest, the dismal science, and brilliant beverages.

Thursday, October 6, 2016

Ryan admits he'll give away even more to the rich- if voters let him

One of bigger stories from Capitol Hill this week just leaked out in a run-of-the-mill press conference, and should be taken as a serious warning. Yes, it’s from Politico, but it does offer good insight into the mentality of House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin…in residence only) and his oligarch puppetmasters, and it shows the GOP hasn’t changed its stripes one bit when it comes to their embrace of idiotic, regressive tax policy.

If Donald Trump is elected president and Republicans hold onto Congress, House Speaker Paul Ryan is bluntly promising to ram a partisan agenda through Capitol Hill next year, with Obamacare repeal and trillion-dollar tax cuts likely at the top of the list. And Democrats would be utterly defenseless to stop them.

Typically, party leaders offer at least the pretense of seeking bipartisanship when discussing their policy plans. But Ryan is saying frankly that Republicans would use budget reconciliation — a powerful procedural tool — to bypass Democrats entirely. It’s the same tool Republicans slammed Democrats for using to pass the 2010 health care law over their objections.

While GOP leaders have made empty threats to use reconciliation to repeal Obamacare in the past, Ryan is making it clear that this time he plans to use it when it counts. And he would likely have support from a Trump White House. Larry Kudlow, an economic adviser to the GOP presidential nominee, said he is also strongly urging Trump to embrace reconciliation in order to pass sweeping tax cuts.

First of all, anyone taking economic advice from Larry Kudlow is economically illiterate, so of course Drumpf would be listening to that Acela Corridor clown. But I digress.

I don’t necessarily have a major problem in using budget reconciliation to pass these issues through Congress, and I always thought Dems were right to use that maneuver to put Obamacare into law. In fact, I thought it was stupid to stretch Obamacare discussions out for over a year before stepping up, precisely because the GOP wasn’t serious about dealing with the issue of uninsured and underinsured Americans. The filibustering of legislation has gotten far out of hand, and at some point, there needs to be an ability for things to be passed and put into law (or at least to be vetoed by the president, and discussed further).

But the danger is why Ryan, Trump, and the rest of the Republicans would pull this tactic. They'd do it to continue an absurdly slanted tax system that allows someone like Drumpf to pay no income taxes for 2 decades by “spreading out” one year of losses, and then put the failed, destructive policies on steroids.

Republicans would also set about rewriting the tax code through budget reconciliation. Asked if the procedure would be a good way to implement GOP tax plans, Kudlow responded, “Not good, fabulous.” Speaking for himself and not the campaign, Kudlow said reconciliation was “the fastest way in our judgment to get necessary pro-growth tax reform.” He said he has been encouraging that path to Trump and his staff all year, and that they were considering it.

Trump and House Republicans have proposed different tax plans, but they are largely in sync on major principles. Both would cut the top tax rate for individuals to 33 percent from the current 39.6 percent. The corporate rate would drop to 15 percent under Trump’s plan and 20 percent under the House GOP plan, from 35 percent today. Both plans also would drain federal coffers of several trillion dollars and give the biggest boost to the wealthy. By the end of the decade, the richest 1 percent would have accumulated 99.6 percent of the benefits of the House GOP plan, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

And how would Ryan’s GOP make up for that “draining of the federal coffers”? The same way they always want to! Cutting Social Security, Medicare, and aid to states, and driving up the federal deficit to an unsustainable level. Once again, the needs of DC lobbyist Grover Norquist (quoted at length in the Politico article) override the needs of the constituents these members of Congress allegedly “represent.”

The TPC data also indicate that over the next decade, as a group households with incomes between $75,000 and $500,000 — whose incomes mostly place them in the 80-95th percentile of households — will experience a tax increase under the House GOP plan. This likely results from a combination of the elimination of certain deductions that benefit these households (such as the ability to deduct state and local tax payments) and the elimination, after 2017, of the deductibility of certain interest expenses on loans (this disallowance likely has the most effect on business owners somewhat below the very top cash income levels, who may be more highly leveraged than those at the very top). TPC estimates indicate that for this group, changes such as these outweigh the value of cuts to their tax rates and other provisions that benefit them.

That's your typical college-grad couple where both are in everyday white-collar jobs, or a two-income family with an experienced trades worker. And the handful of dollars a middle and working-class person might get back in lower taxes will more than be made up by the real social and out-of-pocket costs that'll result from the massive amount of cuts to programs and services under Ryan's (and Trump's) plan.

Any further thoughts you may have about Donald Trump being some kind of independent that cares about “the working man” should be fast put to rest with the fact that Trump will appear with Ryan, Scott Walker, and Ron Johnson at a GOP event in Elkhorn this Saturday (oh, who am I kidding, most of you readers aren’t gullible racist trash and you were never fooled by Drumpf). It proves yet again that outside of trade, Trump’s difference with the 2016 GOP establishment is one of tone, and not one of substance.

But there’s one problem with Ryan’s plans to use budget reconciliation to steamroll this awful, trickle-down agenda into law. He needs Trump to win the presidency, and he needs the House and Senate to continue to be run by the Republicans. Which makes it imperative to make sure those things don’t happen, and it goes past voting for Hillary Clinton and Russ Feingold in Wisconsin’s statewide races. This also means having the Dems win statewide, not just in the big cities, but in the House seats that may be gerrymandered, but not so much that they aren’t winnable.

They’ll especially be winnable if the Dems running for Congress against Republicans constantly ask their GOP opponents if they stand with Ryan’s guaranteed-to-fail plans to give away everything to rich at the expense of everyone else’s security, because I bet most voters don’t believe in it. And that includes Ryan himself, who still “represents” most of the areas of Wisconsin with the highest unemployment rates in the state, yet seems much more willing to listen to the DC oligarch crowd than any of his constituents.

So over this last month, you want to find a Dem Congressional challenger to get behind.

Paul Ryan has made two big gaffes this week, by admitting his plans to jam through his agenda if given the chance, and by tacitly admitting that today’s Wisconsin GOP is the party of Trump, by inviting the Donald to his soiree in Elkhorn this weekend. Now it’s time to make Purty Mouth Pau-lie pay for showing his ass.

Pretty much correct Peter. Except the citizens won't ask for the privatization, it'll be forced on them by budget deficits and ALEC legislators that shrug and say "We have no choice."

The Paul Ryans of the world claim he wants to reduce "dependence", but he and his funders absolutely want the average citizen to be dependent on corporate "benefactors" who determine all aspects of their life.

About Me

This cat's a 40-something libation-enjoying gabber still trying to do the right thing. Watch his crazy adventures as he works and stumbles his way through the great world of public service in the Age of Fitzwalkerstan, while keeping tabs on Bucky Badger and the next Great Depression. I'm told I'm big in Oshkosh.